Inquiries were bootless; she left London, England, the world; for she shut herself up in a convent, Heaven knows why: and, as her epitaph might say, is remembered with regret by all who knew her—and by one who did not.[Pg 272]
Perhaps I ought not to lament—perhaps I do not lament—that I saw no more of Adèle Lepicq. I might have been blind to beauties which all the world adored; I might have discovered imperfections of which no others dreamed. It is pleasant, when I find in all I meet some little admixture of human frailty, to look back to one object which appears still all divine; it is charming, when I am deserted by the fondest friends, betrayed by the dearest hopes, to cling to an imaginative pleasure from which I can expect no treason or desertion. I have flirted with some score of beauties with sufficiently great perseverance, and sufficiently poor success; I have been desperately in love more than once; but if all the rapture of my real passions were set in one scale of a balance, and the luxury of this ideal one were put into the other, I believe the madder weight of the two would preponderate. I remember that in the fervour of my last disappointment I wrote a very fine copy of verses to the same effect; and thus, or nearly thus, they ran—
Many a beaming brow I’ve known,
And many a dazzling eye,
And I’ve listened to many a melting tone
In magic fleeting by;
And mine was never a heart of stone,
And yet my heart hath given to none
The tribute of a sigh;
For fancy’s wild and witching mirth
Was dearer than aught I found on earth;
And the fairest forms I ever knew
Were far less fair than—L’Inconnue!
Many an eye that once was bright
Is dark to-day in gloom;
Many a voice that once was light
Is silent in the tomb;
Many a flower that once was dight
In beauty’s most entrancing might
Hath faded in its bloom;
But she is still as fair and gay
As if she had sprung to life to-day;
A ceaseless tone and a deathless hue
Wild Fancy hath given to—L’Inconnue![Pg 273]
Many an eye of piercing jet
Hath only gleamed to grieve me
Many a fairy form I’ve met,
But none have wept to leave me;
When all forsake, and all forget,
One pleasant dream shall haunt me yet,
One hope shall not deceive me;
For oh! when all beside is past,
Fancy is found our friend at last,
And the faith is firm, and the love is true,
Which are vowed by the lips of—L’Inconnue!
THE INCONVENIENCE OF HAVING AN ELDER BROTHER.
I do not care for the paternal acres. To say the truth, Halbert Hall never pleased me. As a child I detested the long dark avenues of stunted trees; and the heavy melancholy stream of moaning water, and the long passages, with their doleful echoes, and their countless doors, and the vast chambers with all their pomp and pageantry of faded furniture and family portraits. I am happier here in Lincoln’s Inn, though one floor is my palace and one lackey my establishment; and I leave the Hall, without a sigh, to my elder brother.
I shall not die for the lack of ten thousand a year. I never longed to keep hounds, or an opera dancer; to give champagne dinners, or to represent a county; to win at Doncaster, or to lose at rouge et noir. Your true Epicurean does not need great wealth; I can afford to wear a tolerable coat, and drive an unexceptionable cabriolet; to be seen sometimes at the Opera, and keep myself out of reach of the Bench; to throw away a trifle at picquet, and cook a wild duck for my antagonist. These things content me; and, except when some unusual temptation has awakened my appetite or some more than common loss, for a time, ruffled my[Pg 274] philosophy, I would not readily exchange them for the rent-roll and the three per cents. of my elder brother.
As for the title, it is not to be mentioned seriously as the object of a reasonable man’s ambition. In old times a belted lord had certain privileges and pastimes, which might make life pass pleasantly enough. It was interesting to war upon his equals; it was amusing to trample on his inferiors; there was some merriment in the demolition of an abbey; there was some excitement in the settlement of a succession. Nowadays, it is as well to be called Tom as my Lord, unless you have a mind to dine at the dullest tables, and make speeches to the drowsiest audience in the world. So I resign my chance of the peerage without reluctance; the more that the coronet must pass from the temples of its present apoplectic possessor over an artillery officer, a rural dean, and an attaché to an embassy, before it decorates the honoured brows of my elder brother.